This was a project I created and worked on while at Sense Worldwide. Essentially harnessing the power of the crowd to create something. At Sense we had a global network of creative folk at our disposal and we wanted to engage them in exciting and compelling projects. I Love My Chair was one of them.
We asked the network to take a picture of their favourite chair, answer some questions and then submit it to the website. We then judged the entries after about 5 weeks and selected the entries which would make the book.
Sense had done some work for Herman Miller in the past so we persuaded them to give us a top speck Aeron chair as a prize for the best entry. We then shipped it out to the winner a certain David Hicks, in Scotland.
As an open source project we didn't really want to profit from the book so we got it published on LuLu and sold it at cost of £13.43 or £0.69 for the downloadable PDF. Anyone who submitted a chair recieved a cheaper copy.
To say a considerable amount was learned about UGC (user generated content) books would be an understatement!
I Love My Chair was always meant to be the first step of a series of books. I set up I Love My T-Shirt but then left the company before it was completed. At the time I Love My Mum was also set up. The plan was to launch a new I Love My project every month or so.
I can't comment on the progress of those two projects but I know that Sense (as of January 2008) is running I Love To Party in conjunction with a project for a drinks brand.
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This was one of the many UGC, offline / online projects I engaged with, while at Sense. With UGC projects I've found you never get quite what you think you will but you get some good experience along the way.
